Being offended is not the same as being harmed

I was flattered and excited to accept the invitation to serve as the regular Conservative voice for a media outlet I highly respect for its balanced, thorough, and thoughtful content.

In my regular pieces, I intend to be outspoken and speak my truth, and that will come as no surprise to anyone!

I will try to be fair. I will try to be thoughtful. I will listen to arguments with which I disagree. And more importantly, I have no intention of deliberately causing offence.

But I am also not going to spend my time treading on eggshells in case someone finds an argument uncomfortable, because being authentic and honest is how we start solving the real issues.

We have reached a point where our determination not to offend anyone is beginning to prevent us from having the honest conversations we desperately need. We seem to have moved from asking whether words are true, useful or malicious to simply whether somebody might be offended. A free society cannot make the avoidance of offence its highest priority.

We live in an age of "hurty words", safe spaces and trigger warnings. We increasingly hear that certain conversations are harmful simply because they make people uncomfortable or offend.

However, we have to give our permission in order to be offended.

It is not the words we hear or the actions we see that hurt us, but the meaning we give them and our reactions to them. If we choose to be offended, we have to deal with it in a grown-up, useful way.

Words that previous generations would have regarded as criticism, disagreement, or simply an opinion are sometimes treated as a form of injury.

There is an important distinction here.

Bullying is wrong. Abuse is wrong. Deliberate discrimination is wrong. Deliberately humiliating or intimidating another person is wrong.

But being offended is not the same as being harmed.

Someone disagreeing with you isn't necessarily an attack. And hearing something you don't like isn't necessarily something you need protecting from. Sometimes, you simply need to hear it, and sometimes the answer is just "I disagree".

Thankfully, we are now seeing something of a sea change.

The police are no longer going to be involved in "non-crime hate crime" squabbles, the most ridiculous of all phrases that I've ever heard within the justice system. Universities have been told that offensive speech is still free speech, and from 1 September, a new complaints system will allow individuals to complain about the suppression of free speech at universities, managed by the Office for Students in England.

But more needs to be done, and I will not be holding back on the important issues of our time.

I will undoubtedly have people who disagree. I will certainly annoy some people. And I hope I will occasionally make people think.

But I won't be walking on eggshells.

If we become so frightened of saying the wrong thing that we stop having honest conversations, we don't create a better society – we create a quieter one.

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